So-Called Feminine Approaches to Dominance

The following are excerpts of emails sent from Will and Art to Liza and Allison on 12 April 2015.

Circe Invidiosa by John William Waterhouse

Will:

Feel free to take on more than one character, or one, or none. I generally take the lead on Will and Art generally takes the lead on Arthur and Farthington, but we both kind of write all the other characters (or at least have debates about them) while assuming someone else will play them at some point. Art has written Will stuff and I've written Arthur stuff. Also, whether people are antagonists or protagonists keeps changing. At one point, Joe Lazarus, Jr., was the focal point of the story in my eyes, and Will was the antagonist. Then Farthington outdid Will. Then Steffi outdid Farthington. Then we added the Benefactor, who is still smaller than the beasts from air, sea, and land. And really, God is at the center of the story.  

Anyway, Liza, I get what Art is saying with you and Allison both playing sides of Steffi, but I see you as also being The Benefactor and yourself as the discoverer of The Benefactor, as you confront both Detroit and the silliness of Detroit authenticity issues on a daily basis. 

One last thing...I at least don't trust myself to write female characters and neither does Art, I'm guessing, but we're both U of M grads, so we wouldn't be satisfied with the story if the female characters didn't kick butt. Personally, I believe in the superiority of women to men, and I think that idea is playing out more and more in the story. Of course, I worry about sexism. On the one hand, Leif Erikson's sister The Benefactor is way more of a badass than Leif ever was. On the one hand, Leif Erikson's sister The Benefactor is way more of a badass than Leif ever was. On the other hand, I can't tell if Steffi's overthrowing the masculine approach of Farthington's mind...um...penetrations by becoming the digital environment through which she...um...engulfs all of humanity is really feminist or sexist.  At any rate, I think Art and I would both benefit by letting go of our hold on Steffi and The Benefactor for a while and seeing what you do with them.

Thanks for playing along!

Art:

Right. The one thing I would change is that Farthington's is a "feminine" approach, in that, as we've said, he "has no content of his own" but instead seeks to control the context. That's stereotypically feminine, yes, but what other than a stereotypical approach would Farthington choose? It's all about appropriation, whether that be blue-eyed soul or so-called feminine approaches to dominance. It's just that he eventually gets outdone in this regard. 

This is the counterintuition of John the Baptist, Mary, and Jesus--the idea of being humbled as the sure path to exaltation (not that they thought of it in those terms!). This same counterintuition is seen in distorted form in Farthington and Humboldt. 

As you said, it turns out engulfing is more powerful than penetrating (a là rock, paper, maybe even scissors).  

Farthington figured this out, forming a cult with no doctrine, merely creating a clearing in which he exists as "next to nothing." And then coopts, echoes, embeds, reposts, retweets, reframes, repeats, resounds, and otherwise lives parasitically off others' content. 

I realize this has to sound a little weird coming from Farthington's email! Okay, we'll shut up!!!